E-Journals and the Big Deal: A Review of the Literature

Author : Cindy Sjoberg

Faced with shrinking budgets and increased subscription prices, many academic libraries are seeking ways to reduce the cost of e-journal access. A common target for cuts is the “Big Deal,” or large bundled subscription model, a term coined by Kenneth Frazier in a 2001 paper criticizing the effects of the Big Deal on the academic community.

The purpose of this literature review is to examine issues related to reducing e-journal costs, including criteria for subscription retention or cancellation, decision-making strategies, impacts of cancellations, and other options for e-journal content provision. Commonly used criteria for decision-making include usage statistics, overlap analysis, and input from subject specialists.

The most commonly used strategy for guiding the process and aggregating data is the rubric or decision grid. While the e-journal landscape supports several access models, such as Pay-Per-View, cloud access, and interlibrary loan, the Big Deal continues to dominate. Trends over the past several years point to dwindling support for the Big Deal however, due largely to significant annual rate increases and loss of content control.

URL : http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slissrj/vol6/iss2/3/

Preservation Status Of E Resources A Potential Crisis…

Preservation Status Of E-Resources: A Potential Crisis In Electronic Journal Preservation :

“E-journals have replaced the majority of titles formerly produced in paper format. Academic libraries are increasingly dependent on commercially produced, born-digital content that is purchased or licensed. The purpose of this presentation is to share the findings of a 2CUL study that assesses the role of LOCKSS and PORTICO in preserving each institution’s e-journal collections. The 2CUL initiative is a collaboration between Columbia University Library (CUL) and Cornell University Library (CUL) to join forces in providing content, expertise, and services that are impossible to accomplish acting alone.

Although LOCKSS is considered a successful digital preservation initiative, neither of the CULs felt that they fully understood the potential of the system for their own settings and collections. In support of this goal, a joint team was established in November 2010 to investigate various questions to assess how LOCKSS is being deployed and the implications of local practices for both CUL’s preservation frameworks. This study was seen as a high-level investigation to characterize the general landscape and identify further research questions. One of the practical outcomes was a comparative analysis of Portico and LOCKSS preservation coverage for Columbia and Cornell’s serial holdings. A key finding was that only 15-20% of the e-journal titles in the libraries’ collections are currently preserved by these two initiatives. Further analysis suggests the remaining titles fall into roughly 10 categories, with a variety of strategies needed to ensure their preservation.”

URL : http://www.cni.org/topics/digital-preservation/preservation-status-of-eresources/

E-only scholarly journals: overcoming th…

E-only scholarly journals: overcoming the barriers :

“In recent years, publishers, librarians and academics have seized the opportunities offered by the electronic publication of scholarly journals. Despite the popularity of e-journals, however, content continues to be published, acquired and used in physical printed form. In the UK, we are still some way from a wholly electronic journal environment. This study is prompted by a concern from publishers and librarians that the retention of both printed and e-journal formats adds unnecessary costs throughout the supply chain from publisher to library to user. In view of the many advantages of electronic journals, this report sets out to understand the barriers to a move to e-only provision of scholarly journals in the UK, and to investigate what various players within the scholarly communications system could do in order to encourage such a move.”

URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/E-only_report_for_screen.pdf

E-Journal Usage and Impact in Scholarly …

E-Journal Usage and Impact in Scholarly Research: A Review of the Literature :

“This article reviews the literature dealing with scholarly information behavior around the use of e-journals. Its aims are to examine the use and impact the availability of e-journals has had on the community of scholars, mainly from the UK, but looking also at literature from other countries. Results demonstrated the huge rise in availability and take-up of e-journals, although there are mixed findings regarding the fate of the print format. Access to e-literature is dominated by keyword searching, with subject-specific (e.g., chemical abstracts); or general academic (Web of Knowledge) gateways and search engines (typically Google) all used above publishers platforms, alerts, and other ways to find literature. The value of e-journals has been shown to be high, both in terms of in gaining new insights and helping with teaching, and in measure of “Contingent valuation”: the time or cost incurred by not having provision. Barriers to e-journal use included non-purchase of titles by the library and years or volumes not available electronically. Although many disciplinary differences exist, due to their differing natures and means of scholarly communication, nevertheless, the review concludes that it is now unthinkable for researchers to work without the convenience and comprehensiveness that e-journals provide them.”

URL : http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a928400689&fulltext=713240928

New Value-Added Services for Classics E-Journals

This paper examines issues related to electronic journal publishing in the field of Classics with a specific focus on the discussion of new value-added services for e-journals. Preliminary experimental data from a survey that explored the diffusion of digital technologies into the publishing workflow of Italian Classics journals identified two new value-added services: reference linking to primary sources and semantic indexing.

This paper also emphasizes the importance of supporting citation persistence for electronic resources. Finally, it will describe the significance and overall functioning of these services and then conclude with an outline of the characteristics of the main technical components needed for an e-journal implementation that provides these identified services through an extension of the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/15006/